Last year I read the Wold Newton Alternate novels A Feast Unknown, The Mad Goblin and Lord of the Trees by Farmer. This guy was completely in tune with today's "remix" culture. Except he was doing it a half-century ago.

Also still working on Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I hope to have both finished by the end of the month.

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At the Simon & Schuster booth at New York Comic-Con recently, they were handing out free sleep masks printed with that book's title as promotions. They gave me one after my Rise of the Federation signing, and I think it actually helped me get some sleep in unfamiliar beds during my trip. At least, I think it helped me get to sleep faster, though I'm not sure I slept longer.

I have no idea what the book's about, though. But it strikes me as ironic that something to do with Stephen King would help me get sleep as opposed to losing sleep...

Also still working on Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. I hope to have both finished by the end of the month.

Click to expand...

At the Simon & Schuster booth at New York Comic-Con recently, they were handing out free sleep masks printed with that book's title as promotions. They gave me one after my Rise of the Federation signing, and I think it actually helped me get some sleep in unfamiliar beds during my trip. At least, I think it helped me get to sleep faster, though I'm not sure I slept longer.

I have no idea what the book's about, though. But it strikes me as ironic that something to do with Stephen King would help me get sleep as opposed to losing sleep...

Abominable by Dan Simmons came out yesterday! I love The Terror and this one is already shaping up to be a great historical fiction thriller. There's an extended foreword that is just outstanding.

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Received my copy from Amazon as well yesterday. Simmons has really carved out a nice little niche for himself as the master of historical horror in the last decade. Books that are scary as hell and historically accurate, to an authentic degree.

Drood has forever changed my mental picture of Dickens and poor Wilkie Collins. The same can be said for Black Hills and General Custer.

Reading Doomsday World by the stacked writing team of Peter David, Carmen Carter, Robert Greenberger and Michael Jan Friedman. Just how do four writers collaborate on a 270 page book without stepping all over each other? I feel that at times I can pick up on certain inflections of the authors but by and large I have no idea how they do this.

I just finished rereading Dayton Ward's debut novel, In the Name of Honor, for the first time in far too long. It holds up very well even though it tried tackling the Klingon forehead issue before "Affliction"/"Divergence" settled it, and it provides an excellent explanation for Kirk's uncharacteristic hatred of Klingons in TUC. Although I can tell it was under a different editorial regime, since the book disregards the existence of "More Tribbles, More Troubles," something I'm sure Dayton wouldn't have done if he hadn't been instructed to do so. And there's one more slight continuity glitch:

It ends with Gorkon unseating Chancellor Kesh in 2287, whereas Mere Anarchy: The Blood-Dimmed Tide has Kesh still in office in 2291. But ITNOH does say that Gorkon only assumed temporary chancellorship during Kesh's "illness," so it wasn't portrayed as irreversible. There could've been some later political reversal that put Kesh back in power.